'Fringe': The final season premiere - Recap

This Week... It's 2036 - the Fringe team have been reunited with Peter and Olivia's daughter Etta, but Olivia herself is missing and the Observers still rule the Earth with an iron fist...

Observing Fringe... Wipe those tears away and face it - the last ever season of Fringe has begun. But it's not as simple as 13 final regular adventures with familiar characters - we're back in the dystopian future of 2036, first glimpsed in season four's 'Letters of Transit'. As Walter's almost absurdly epic voiceover informs us, "The battle to save mankind is about to begin!"

We open with a haunting and atmospheric dream sequence which briefly recaps the day of the Observer invasion - several years after the dramatic event of last season's finale, Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Olivia (Anna Torv) have their blissfully happy life turned upside down when their young daughter Etta is snatched away from them...

But when Peter returns suddenly to the waking world, we're left with a whole heap of questions. Sure, he - and later Olivia - are now reunited with the adult Etta (Georgina Haig), but what exactly happened to her as a child? And what is the Observers' interest in her?

You could look upon Fringe's time-leap as evidence of a missed opportunity - even if one assumes that the move to 2036 was always intended for the show's final season, this sudden and jarring transition does make it feel like showrunner Joel Wyman and his writing team were forced to make that change sooner than they'd hoped.

There's part of us that already misses the old Fringe formula - where's Broyles (an entirely absent Lance Reddick) to inform Olivia, Peter and Walter about the latest creepy and kooky event? There's no sign of the Harvard lab and, as much as we'd like to believe otherwise, we doubt that Gene the Cow was placed in amber too...

Still, we had four years of that Fringe and - particularly for a show that's changed its format and style as much as this one has - perhaps it's only right that Wyman and co refused to take the simple path in this final run of episodes.

Nevertheless, it's going to take us a while to adjust to all the change - this second outing to 2036 makes for an enjoyable 43-odd minutes, but the new Fringe is a *very* different show to the one we were watching just four months ago.

One big change is the full-time addition of Georgina Haig to the cast, but the highest compliment we can pay the Australian actress is that her presence is one of the less jarring elements of this premiere. She feels like a natural addition to the cast and, we suspect, not one that fans will resent. Her scenes with long-time Fringe stars Torv, Jackson and John Noble show definite promise.

And there's still aspects of 'Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11' that will comfort uncertain Fringe fans - the appearance of Edward Markham (Clark Middleton) suggests that the leap to 2036 doesn't entirely rule out future appearances from favorite characters.

And the briefest of references to William Bell and Henry Ian Cusick's Simon Foster perhaps suggests that we'll be seeing those two again before too long - even if Nimoy is still supposedly enjoying 'retirement'...

We'd still appreciate a few more glimpses of the past though, if only to explore in more detail the circumstances surrounding Etta's disappearance and Peter's decision to "abandon" Olivia and Walter. In the latest twist to their relationship, Peter's guilt seems to have driven he and Olivia apart off-screen - we've skipped over their happy times and headed straight into another crisis. Sure, it's cruel to shippers, but let's be honest, a crisis is always more interesting than a perfect romance.

As season's five opener draws to a close, Walter is rescued from the clutches of the Observers, but the torture he underwent while in their custody appears to have erased the plan that September hid within his mind - the scheme that could see off Earth's new masters for good.

For now, the Observers remain very much in control, though there's the first flickering of hope in the episode's moving final scene, as Walter embraces what's left of humanity - a song and a solitary flower.

As promised, this is a far more serialised season. Unlike the Fringe of old, which balanced individual episode storylines with a broader arc, this is all about the bigger picture - all set-up and very little pay-off. That's not a criticism, mind you - as long as the resolution is tackled as well as the setting of the scene, we'll be very happy indeed.

Overall, 'Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11' doesn't throw up any major surprises and isn't Fringe at its very best, but it's a solid opening to this year's '13-part feature film'.

What did you think of the Fringe season five premiere? Share your opinions below!